E/ME 105 Design for the Developing World

To learn how a product for the rural poor should be developed, we actually build that product - at least to the prototype stage. By doing this for one application, students learn how to build other products because the processes at the highest level are similar. This class was suggested by the Student Club, “Engineers for a Sustainable World” (ESW). With their help, a modification of my Product Design Class was accomplished. They have continued as my partner in the design and execution of this class. The idea was to re-orient the curricula to target building products for the 1 billion+ people in the world who earn less than the equivalent of a dollar a day. In addition to an extreme focus on cost and usefulness, we tried to design products that not only were environmentally sustainable but also economically viable. These products would solve a need so powerful that sufficient funds could be generated to build a sustainable business by entrepreneurs in the rural community. We decided to initially concentrate on Guatemala, benefiting from the strong Guatemalan community in LA. Our partners were faculty and students from University Landivar in Guatemala City and Art Center College of Design. We greatly appreciated the collaboration of Luz Marina Delgado, Brian Rasnow, Ovidio Morales, Steve Montgomery (ArtCenter). The Course moved in (2010) to Kerala, India to St Gits working with Professors, Dr Jason Cherian Isaac, Thomas Varghese and Mathew Vinay John as welcoming partners and in 2013 to IIT Ghandinar for 2 years. We subsequently returned home to LA as Design for Freedom from Disability.

The course included cases, my lectures on product design, and guest experts. All lectures were video teleconferenced between campuses. Each team had Guatemalan students (then Indian students) as members. Thus, we are able to obtain ground truth to each Team’s ideas on a continuous basis. The Art Center School of Design in Pasadena has also been a close partner. We made pre-trips to partner counties each year prior to the beginning of the course for students to generate ideas, and to bond with partner universities and their students.

The most successful spin-out from the class to date is the wheelchair project. Here the students cannibalized bicycles to make a wheelchair. The result was low cost and easy repairability and ergonomic design. From this effort came a non-profit: Intelligent Mobility International(IMI) led by then student and now Entrepreneur, Rudy Roy. Before and after graduating Caltech students have raised funds, hired employees in Guatemala, and incorporated. Although the numbers are still small, over 300 wheelchairs were built and distributed in Guatemala by Guatemalans. The design has been modified several times in E/ME classes as new information on its use is obtained. The Team has won several awards including a “Breakthrough Award” from Popular Mechanics. At the meeting last month of the National Collegiate Innovators and Inventors Association (NCIIA), they exhibited their latest version wheelchair at an exhibit in the Smithsonian. They placed second in a Social Ventures LA competition run with many entries. There are other students doing independent study, working in the area of clean water – both solar distillation and point-of-use filtration.

E/ME/MedE 105 Design for Freedom From Disability

This is a course focused on aiding people with disabilities through understanding of Medical, Engineering, Human and Business contexts. It was performed in collaboration with our partners, Rancho los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center, (Andy Lin), Art Center School of Design (Jefferey Higashi) and many others who mentored, inspired, lectured and assisted. Rancho has an amazing group of people who live with disabilities or work with people to help them live their lives. They collaborated with student teams to test and critique the results.

Volunteers who lectured and inspired included Rudy Roy, Erik Sorto, Kathleen Shanfield, Diana Ugalde, Jan Furamasu, Amanda Van Dusen, Henry Evans, Jim Chud, Nora Ames, Andy Downard, Mark Fuglevand, Drora Shevy, Dmitrii Estrin, Hymie Pogir, Barbara Beskind and many others!

Some projects include: Wheelchair for patients with hemiplegia, pressure ulcer prevention system, 3D printer prosthesis, open source eye-tracking software.

Some of these results were presented at the “Abilities and Aging ” conferences in LA.

For the Annual Meetings of RESNA (The Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Center), a student competition was held to choose papers to be presented. Caltech student teams from the class applied for the expense-paid visits to the meetings in Washington and New Orleans. In total, there were 80-100 submissions from many universities. Of these, there were six chosen winners each year that we competed. Caltech teams won with two teams in one year (2016) and one team the next (2017)!

These were the Caltech winners:

Allez
Stephanie Moon, Sheila Lo, Auggie Nanz

Introduction: Allez allows individuals with hemiplegia to move with ease by producing an affordable and durable one arm wheelchair drive attachment capable of being adapted to various wheelchairs. The focus of this project was to provide a useful, intuitive solution for people with hemiplegia. We have accomplished this goal by providing our users with a modular one arm drive attachment for manual wheelchairs.

Induction Boyz
Morgan Hill, Thomas Peterson, Omer Subasi

Introduction: A product was developed to help power wheelchair users to recharge their wheelchair batteries. This is done without the aid of a caregiver. The user easily maneuvers their wheelchair over a fixed low profile contact device which enables this charging.

Axis (with ArtCenter)
Mary Boyajian, Elliott Davis, Bogdan Dimitriu, Sherrie Yang

Introduction: Paraplegics use their upper body strength to lift themselves up while they move short distances to perform a transfer. This is very hard on the body over time particularly for women.
We devised a foldable, sliding board to help transfers in and out of their chairs. This includes moving into and out of a car seat to a wheelchair.

The final papers are available upon request.

In 2017 six papers were written on:

The Doorbuster 2017: An Automatic Door Opener for people in wheelchairs
Manasa Ashok, Sumana Mahata, Meera Ramakrishnan, Harry Teng, Sherrie Yang

Introduction: The process of opening rolling through doors is a challenge for wheelchair uses. An automatic door opener was designed to be cost effective, intuitive, and helpful in getting through the front door of a home.

Over Braked – new braking systems for wheelchairs
Cole Allen, Lucy Chen, Michael Jenson, Sheila Murthy, Alissa Wang

Introduction: Standard brakes for solid rubber wheels work well enough on new wheels but are much less effective on worn tires. This is, of course, highly dangerous for wheelchair users, who may find their chairs shifting or even tipping backwards as they perform their daily transfers in and out of the wheelchair. Our solution is a brake that engages with the floor like a kickstand instead of the wheels. This avoids wear effects.

Pressure Sore Detection System: Motivation, Design, and Fabrication
Nasser Al-Rayes, Ishwar Subramanian

Introduction: Pressure sores are still far too common in the medical world, costing the United States $11 billion each year in patient treatment. For wheelchair patients we developed a series of sensors that sit between the wheelchair upholstery and wheelchair cushion. These sensors will be adjustable depending on the person’s build to ensure our product acts as a one-size-fits-all. This would be the basis for a system which mitigates the effect of pressure over a period of time.

Extensions to existing X-box controllers for avid Gamers with limited mobility
Talia Minear

Introduction: Extensions to adapt existing Xbox controllers for avid gamers with limited mobility were designed and built. This will help build cognitive skills, physical strength, and self-confidence. Commercial Xbox buttons are small and tightly mapped on the controller, which is not designed for fine motor skills and not for the one-handed. Our kit of clip-on additions to the Xbox extend the joysticks and the top trigger buttons. They are easily attached to and removed from the controller to enable ease of putting on and removal. The result is that these tasks can be preformed without outside help.

Wheelpower: “Where there’s a wheel, there’s a way Hybrid-motor assisted wheelchair”
Bailey Da Costa, Vasant Iyer, Mathew Simon, Surya Sundararajan

Introduction: Pushing a wheelchair places a heavy burden on attendants and caregivers; in the long term, caregivers who push wheelchairs often accumulate a number of chronic injuries. Our goal is to create a motorized assist device that can help a caregiver push a collapsible wheelchair, preventing injuries from repetitive stress. Our product is designed to help in a variety of conditions (terrain, inclines, etc.) and feel natural both to the caregiver and the person in the wheelchair.

Axis
Mary Boyajian, Elliott Davis, Bogdan Dimitriu, Sherrie Yang

Introduction: The issue of transfer from a wheelchair to a regular chair or to a driver’s seat of a car is significant. Although boards to slide on are a possible solution, present devices are heavy and bulky. We designed a board that is light (carbon fiber), foldable, strong and compact and was shown to be effective in moving the user into the driver’s seat.

In 2018 two papers were written on:

Intelligent Cane- Advancement of Cane Technology (ACT)
Sandra Liu, Maegan Tucker

Introduction: The work resulted in a prototype cane which was sensitive to tilt - giving a sensory signal (vibration) when not in proper orientation as the gait progressed. This was tested and approved at our partner institution- Rancho los Amigos. Falls by the elderly can be a great risk for disability.

Clunk and Swoosh Assistive wheelchair Anti-tippers
Ellen Chuan , Cindy Huang, Julia Xia

Introduction: The act of propelling a manual wheelchair can be quite hard on the body and can easily lead to shoulder injuries. A next-generation wheelchair power assist would allow wheelchair users to maintain the same level of mobility while decreasing the required physical exertion. The object was to allow the chair to “glide” for longer, cutting the number of times a user would need to push drastically.